Why is there this huge insistence that EV battery packs are somehow inherently going to die before the rest of the car
Perhaps it's because in our own personal experience, 90% of the time the battery is the first component to fail in consumer devices, and also because the typical manufacturer's battery ratings indicate this to be the truth.
Seriously, GM "hopes" to warranty the battery for 10 years, but one must expect that even if they achieve this aim, it will be a pro-rated warranty. Do you honestly believe you're going to get 100% of the replacement cost for a 9 year old battery?
Jay Leno has one from the early 1900s. It still runs on its original nickel-iron batteries.
Citation please. Common sense tells me you are probably misrepresenting this. Most likely the battery housings are the same and the electrolyte and plates have been replaced, making it a "remanufactured" original battery at best.
Where does this myth that the batteries are fundamentally going to have to be replaced come from?
Actual experience with products availible in the real world, today, as opposed to marketing hype.
GM isn't warrantying their pack for ten years for the fun of it.
To put it bluntly, GM isn't warranting jack shit right now. It's speculation. You get to say that when they actually are selling cars with that warranty. Not now. Tell we where I can go buy one of these cars with the 10 year battery warranty?
I'd be surprised if a Volt pack replacement ten years from now costs any more than a transmission replacement does today.
Perhaps you live in some alternate universe, but here in this one transmission replacements are NOT cheap.
By all standards, the pack will outlive the car for most owners. That's what you get with a sizable, low-DoD, cooled NiMH pack in typical hybrid driving conditions.
Again, you have no citation here. Just because a hybrid vehicle is out there on the road, doesn't mean that that battery pack has the bulk of its storage capacity intact.
I would love to have equipment with battery packs with wonderful lifetimes. The thing is that as of today, I can't even get a battery pack for something as simple as a cordless drill that is warrantied for ten years or 3,000 cycles. If you go look at actual specification sheets for batteries, they do not support your claims. Batteries have wear-out mechanisms just like wheel bearings, transitors and tires.